US intelligence on Iran does not stand up, say Vienna sources

One of the most disturbing things about the prelude to the Iraq war was the way that an absence of evidence was taken to be a sure sign of Iraq's deviousness rather than an indication that she perhaps did not possess the weaponry that Washington was claiming she had.

When UN weapons inspectors failed to uncover weapons at sites which America had high on her list of suspected WMD facilities, the notion that the US was barking up the wrong tree was never allowed to be countenanced. Indeed, the notion that Saddam was playing games with the inspectors was only strengthened the less that was found.

It was this mindset that made war inevitable. Or, perhaps, the war was always inevitable - nay, desired - and this mindset was merely the clearest public manifestation of that neo-con wish.

And now history is repeating itself as the US seeks to make a case against Iran.

Diplomatic sources in Vienna are now stating that the intelligence provided by American intelligence agencies to the UN regarding Iranian intentions to build a nuclear bomb are largely unfounded.

At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."

This is drearily reminiscent of the parlour games that were played before the invasion of Iraq, where the US would provide weapons inspectors with lists of suspected sites, all of which turned out not to being used for the purposes that the US alleged.

One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."

Here, again, we find the US relying on informants inside Iran supplying material which should be treated with much more suspicion that it appears to have been dealt with. Why are documents on Iranian computers written in English rather than Farsi? And does the US care about her credibility when she hands such suspect material over to UN inspectors or is she more interested in presenting anything that forwards her case against Iran?

Her case against Iran will certainly be aided by the fact that Iran has refused to halt uranium enrichment as demanded by the UN. However, the Iranians are correct when they argue that enriching uranium is their right under the nuclear non proliferation treaty.

Last night Iran, which says its nuclear fuel programme is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant. "Regarding the suspension mentioned in the report, because such a demand has no legal basis and is against international treaties, naturally, it could not be accepted by Iran," Muhammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Reuters in Tehran. Mr Saeedi said the report showed that returning to talks was the best way to resolve the dispute.

Returning to talks is, indeed, the best way to resolve this dispute. However, when one finds the US - yet again - peddling dubious "evidence" of Iranian ambitions to build a bomb, one has to ask if what we are witnessing is simply an Iraq redux. The US - yet again - building a case to support military action rather than genuinely looking for a solution to a diplomatic crisis.

The US will now, inevitably, push for further sanctions against Iran. And Bush, like the pathetic double down gambler that he is, will bring war closer and shun any chance of a diplomatic resolution.

We've been here before.

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Tags: Bush, Iran, US, uranium enrichment, UN, Ahmadinejad, inspectors, sanctions